3 Factors Leading to EHR Usability Issues, Clinician Burnout

Physician burnout is common issue tied with EHR usability, emergence, and adoption. Poor EHR usability leads to high levels of physician attrition, depression, dissatisfaction, and burnout.

According to HIMSS, EHR usability is the “effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which specific users can achieve a specific set of tasks in a particular environment,” the organization says on its website. Direct clinician burnout and patient safety challenges typically come from EHR products that are sub-optimally designed, developed, or implemented. Usability issues can stem from EHR documentation, cluttered interfaces or a high number of EHR alerts, to name a few.

In order to enhance EHR usability, health IT developers and providers need to accurately assess the key factors that negatively impact EHR usability.